"Charles River Associates has been commissioned to undertake a study on....the market of maintaining or not maintaining the separation between registrars and registries."
I didn't think the issue of "not maintaining" the registry-registrar split was even on the table for discussion. This comment came up in the context of a very interesting Board discussion on the staff's progress developing an implementation plan for new gTLDs, and you should probably read the whole thing for context. Still, I'd be interesting in knowing the provenance of this particular work item. Anyone know?
FWIW, I'm generally aware of conversations about whether to allow some of the low-interest TLDs, like .aero and .museum, to offer registrations direct to the public -- and the heated disagreement on both sides of that issue -- but I was not aware it was something that ICANN was examining.
